


Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold

by extremelyperturbed



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Dark Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:16:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremelyperturbed/pseuds/extremelyperturbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal breaks out and the first thing he looks for is Will Graham.  The problem is that Will has disappeared.  Hannibal then goes to Jack to find out what happened and he finds out that he totally underestimated the man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold

The very first thing Hannibal did when he escaped from the institution was prepare to hunt down Will Graham. He knew of course that the FBI was going to expect this and decided that he should do as much research as possible. He was not surprised to find that Will had quit and moved to Florida. 

He extracted funds he had carefully hidden in offshore accounts and used them to fly down to Miami then rent a car so he could scope out the house Will bought. He drove by and watched to see if there was any protection or surveillance but found none. The house was dark and nobody ever went in or out. So one night, he broke into the house and found only a note on the kitchen table.

“The second I heard you escaped, I knew that you would try to find me. But I have no intention of ever being your toy ever again. Look all you want, you will never find me.” 

Hannibal smiled. He loved challenges.

***

“Hannibal,” said Jack Crawford, standing in the kitchen of his vacation house and staring at the gun Hannibal was pointing at him.

Hannibal noted that Jack Crawford didn’t look surprised to see him nor did he look that afraid. He remembered that Jack’s wife had died a few months after he had been put in the institution. He guessed that life had little to offer him now.

“Do you know where Will Graham is?”

“How would I know? And secondly, why would I tell you?” 

“Because you know that I can make your death either very short or very long. And fooling me takes resources, resources that he doesn’t have. I have been looking for him for over a year yet he always managed to elude me. When I caught up with who I thought was Will, it turned out to be an impersonator who had no knowledge of where Will was. So, where is he?”

“He’s dead.”

Hannibal found himself filled with an incredible burst of anger at Jack’s incongruous smile while saying that. “Why should I believe that?”

“Because I was the one who killed him.”

Hannibal frowned. “Why would you do that?“

“Because making you run around and look for him while I know where he is all this time was as delicious as your dinners used to be.”

Hannibal briefly wondered if Jack had lost his mind from grief and guilt. “I refuse to believe such assertions without proof.”

“I can show you to him. He’s in the freezer in the garage.” 

Hannibal hesitated.

Jack smiled again. “Do you want to see him or not?”

Hannibal followed Jack to the garage. Jack lifted up the door to the stand-alone freezer and inside was Will’s naked frozen body, laid out as if asleep like Snow White. But nobody was going to wake up this particular prince from his icy tomb. 

Hannibal saw the chest wound that showed that Jack had shot him through the heart. “Why?”

“He came to me. He couldn’t bring himself to commit suicide rather than die by inches, afraid of what you’d do to him. So he asked me to put him out of his misery. I saw the pain in his eyes. They reminded me of what I saw in my wife’s face during her last days of hospice care. He was happy that he was not your victim again. I owed him that much after exposing him to you out of my selfishness.” 

Hannibal shot Jack in the right knee. Jack screamed in pain and fell to the ground. Hannibal pulled the trigger again, shattering his other knee cap. Hannibal took a brief survey of the garage and found various interesting tools to use on Jack. “Your death will be a very long and painful one.” 

***

Hannibal defrosted Will’s body. It had taken hours considering how long Jack had kept it frozen but Hannibal was used to keeping certain items a long time in order to savor them for years. He hated Jack for making this the only way he could have Will. He used his butcher’s knife, sliced through the abdomen and reached inside for the still cool liver. 

He cooked the organ with great care and was very careful to eat every single bite. He ignored the slightly off-taste as being from freezer burn. That was until he started to feel the effects . . .

It was only then that Hannibal realized what the end game has always been. Between the two of them, Jack and Will had come up with a plan that was so completely twisted that they knew Hannibal would never suspect them of having come up with it. Will had drunk and had himself injected with poison and Jack had shot him to cover up the cause of death then froze him. In order to keep Hannibal off-balance, Jack had then used the vast number of people who hated Hannibal for killing their loved ones to send Hannibal on a merry chase around the world. Killing Hannibal or putting him back in his cage wasn’t enough for them; they had to mind screw him as well. 

***  
The forensics team looked at the diner and his last meal. “I can’t believe that the guy eating him died laughing.” 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not someone who likes schemes that are overly complicated but I don't mind so much if it's based on knowing your target's strengths and flaws. I also remember a riff on Bluebeard where a woman used such a scheme to kill the monster.


End file.
